What Comes After
by Zoop
Summary: One-shot. Inspired by the personal question of what comes after death for Orcs.


The Orc brandished his sword at his enemy and roared a challenge. The other Orc bellowed right back, and they both charged. Steel met steel as they clashed. Blood was spilled. The first Orc pushed his opponent back, one step, then another. To distract his enemy further, the Orc sunk his teeth into the other's shoulder. It was also the sword arm; the bitten one howled with indignant and pained rage, but the Orc smirked. He could feel his enemy weakening.

The second Orc pushed himself away and tried to regroup, but the first Orc wouldn't allow it. He could smell blood, taste blood: his thoughts were of nothing else but slaking his thirst for more.

Baring his teeth, the Orc launched himself at his enemy once more. So consumed by bloodlust was he that the second Orc's seemingly random swing thwarted his advance. His sword flew from his hand and landed out of reach. But he was not dismayed.

Crouching briefly, his hand straying for a moment to his boot, the first Orc dodged his foe's follow-through, and drove his shoulder into the other's gut. Wrapping one arm around the second Orc's waist, he flipped the dagger from his boot in his free hand and stabbed the Orc in the back.

The howling protests were as music to his ears. The gurgling and shuddering body, jerking each time the Orc stabbed hard, pleased him more than coupling. He only vaguely remembered what that was about anyway. No, this was better.

Withdrawing, he gloated over his slain enemy for a moment, but only a moment. There was more to do. He'd come into this camp with ten or more Orcs. He couldn't quite recall how many. Nor any of their names. But that hardly mattered. Each hut held a few Orcs. Males, females, young. They held their blood against him, but he was determined to have it. Have it _all_.

Turning toward a nearby hut, he sneered. He fetched his lost blade and secured his emergency dagger in his boot once more. Then he advanced. His footsteps quickened to a run, then he burst into the small dwelling.

The figure that greeted his arrival was no warrior, nor did it rise to his challenging roar. Fury contorted his features.

"_Face me_!" he bellowed, raising his sword. The old Orcess simply stared at him from her seat by a low-burning fire. "Yuh ain't so old yuh can't raise a sword. Get up!"

She merely arched her brow and tilted her head. Sighing, she said, "What is your name, Orc?"

His sword arm went utterly slack, and he nearly dropped his weapon. No words could have unsettled him so completely as those seemed to. He couldn't form a reply, and stared at her in silence. A slow smile curved her nearly toothless mouth.

"There now," she said quietly. "Sit. I've a tale to tell. It is one I must repeat every day. I will share it with you."

Shaking himself violently, he snarled, "I got no time for words, old one. I came to kill." He raised his sword once more.

"Yes, you have," she nodded. "You thirst and you hunger. It is consuming, and cannot be denied."

"No, it can't!" he roared, and lifted his sword over his head, preparing to bring it down hard upon hers.

"Have you wondered why you do not devour the flesh and the blood you crave?" she asked, unmoved by his threat.

Again, he was rendered immobile by her question. His arms fell limply at his sides.

"You do not eat their flesh or quench your thirst on their blood," she continued, unperturbed, "because you do not truly hunger or thirst. You cannot, you see."

He shook his head in denial for a moment. Then he blinked, and thought of the Orc he just slew. The hunger drove him, but... he felt no pinch in his stomach, no emptiness that told of a need to eat.

"Why can't I?" he growled angrily, as if his newly-discovered condition were somehow her doing.

Her expression was mild, her voice calm. "Because you are dead."

Laughter shook his frame. He laughed hard enough to draw a tear from his eye. After a moment, he gathered himself and demanded, "What is this? A lie to make me spare your life?"

"There is naught to spare, Orc," she told him matter-of-factly. "I am dead also."

Something in her face stilled his tongue. He narrowed his eyes and looked closely at her. She _seemed_ alive. As alive as he was. It must be a trick. She was trying to fool him. He gripped his sword tightly.

"I'll have your head," he growled, raising the weapon once again. "I'll wear your ears."

A slight smile curved her mouth. "Then you will be doing me a service, young one."

Her words wrong-footed him again, and he slowly lowered the blade. "What service?"

"Sit," she insisted, gesturing to the furs she rested upon. Wary of her games, the Orc edged around the cookfire and hesitantly sat facing her. He laid his sword across his knees.

"Good," she nodded approvingly. "Now listen, and remember my words. Each day, we must speak the tale, or it will be lost to us forever."

"What tale?"

"The tale of this place," she whispered. Satisfied that she had his attention, the old Orcess began to speak.

"I was shaman of my clan," she said, lifting her chin proudly. "It was believed that I walked with the spirits. Perhaps I did then. I surely do now." Glancing at the Orc, she smiled for a moment. "I remember my grandmother's grandmother, and how sad she was. _Her_ grandmother's grandmother, you see, could remember a time when she was no Orc. When there was peace, before the dark times.

"My clan kept their memories," she continued. "We remembered, for to forget left us open to deceit. Yet, too often, we fell prey to forgetfulness."

"I don't understand, grandmother," the Orc said quietly. "What were we before?"

Her smile was kind. "I do not recall. I only know what we are, not what we were."

Frustrated by her vagueness, the Orc snorted impatiently. "What's your tale? Get to the point."

"I remember my death," she said, her eyes twinkling. The Orc's face went slack with surprise. "Some of us do. I was old, as you see me. Too weak to carry on. And so I ceased to do so."

He couldn't form words as he stared at her benign face.

"I trust you do not recall yours," she said. "Or every death you have suffered since the first. I recall each of mine."

"Wait," he snapped, shaking himself from the spell she'd put on him with her strange words. "I ain't dead, and I ain't never died."

She sighed, and her brow pinched sympathetically. "You are, and you have. Likely uncountable times. Such is our fate."

"What fate?" he breathed. Her voice, her eyes, her bearing all told him she spoke the truth. Unsettling as it was.

"Because of how we came to be," the old Orcess whispered, "we are condemned." Seeing his mounting confusion and distress, she laid her hand on his. "We awaken here, taking the form we held in life. The hunger that drove us in the living world, drives us here also, but to no purpose. We kill, though we've no enemies. We seek, endlessly, to destroy all in our path. It is pointless; for what we kill, what we tear down, returns each day."

"No," the Orc snapped, shaking his head in denial. "I've killled _many_ Orcs. They do not come back. I've burned camps that were never rebuilt. Gone forever. By _this hand_." He raised his fist in the Orcess's face.

"In this way we are cursed," she said calmly. "We destroy, but what we have laid waste is restored, only to be torn down again and again. We fight one another. Kill our own kind. Paint the stones red with the blood of our kin. We rarely remember our victories, for deaths make us forget."

"Why?" he pleaded, once more struck by the truth of her words, though he wanted to deny it. "Why do we do it? And why can't I remember?"

"Young one," she said gently, "we forget each death for we are not spared its pain. We feel it, as we did the first death. Unless we will ourselves to remember. Few are so strong as that."

He pondered her words, his will to reject them weakening. "What service did you mean?" he finally asked, recalling her earlier claim.

Her beatific smile returned. "I believe that we are not doomed to remain here for all time. I believe that when we have suffered enough deaths at the hands of our kin, we may be granted release."

"Release? To where?"

"I do not know," she shrugged. Yet her face expressed no dread of such an uncertainty. "We were once other than what we are. I have hope that this will be remembered."

"How can you be sure?" the Orc probed. "Has anyone...?"

"I have hope," she repeated.

The hide covering the entrance to the old Orcess's hut was suddenly thrust aside, and a large Orc lumbered inside. Leering with bloodlust, he roared a challenge and raised his great axe over his head.

The young Orc felt the Orcess's hand grip his reassuringly. Closing his eyes, he hoped this would be the last death.


End file.
